Listening for your boots of Spanish leather,
heels worn from years of compas and despair.
I know your beat, your broken harmonies;
they whip like shredded silk, thorn-studded hair
shirts. You’ve reworked martyrdom to cold tease,
partner in a hopeless dance of never.
Last night, aroused by rustling myrtle trees,
I thought I heard you sigh…no? Whenever
such illusions rise, I turn to fairer
game. Your footfall I will hear whenever
I let beauty be in tangled fields of tare
and learn to see past fractured tiles to frieze.
One day, you’ll take those spurs down from the wall;
a final chase, then vanish to us all.

I’ve been chewing darkness for so long
that I don’t know how to relearn joy;
I’ve been walking on lava for so many years
that my feet have lost all memory of fleece.

—Gabriela Mistral, “Nocturne of Consummation”

~~~

I made away today to the blue green
waters, slipping through crevasses of
musty inattention, past the trawling clusters
of opinionates despairing of their worlds
to reach this remnant of an iron age. I used to wait
on people I adored who saw in everything a wrong.
I danced my favourite red shoes off to prove the right
and bled in endless causes. Nearly lost my head
yearning, fruitless, where I never could belong.I’ve been chewing darkness for so long

the fife bands of the mind with their penny
whistle tweedling, their tinpot repercussion
of past victimhoods march at my heels, wanting
me to swallow pain as good for me, agree to being
ground to ash until my joints and sinews ache.
Nothing tastes the way it did when I enjoyed
life, which qualifies my joining the insipid who bash
their heads against the walls of Plato’s cave. Their aim
is group concussion, so torpid and pointless a ploythat I don’t know how to relearn joy.

And yet, now that I’m here
with only forward as my guide
and no convincing evidence that death
like the dusty fly-bit reign of Ozymandias
is worse or better than anything else,
I can turn to the cantankerous my deaf ears,
leave one-trick ponies to their sad politics,
appreciate the strides humanity has made,
has yet to make beyond the vale of fears.I’ve been walking on lava for so many years

they know my name in Pompeii;
Popocatepetl is my winter home.
But for all the pumice I’ve endured,
the present me sees fresh at every turn
and boredom as the only borderlands.
Prosperous, sans alms or palms to grease,
I welcome the agora surrounding me
whose wares and wherewithals are
so abundant, true, intent on peacethat my feet have lost all memory of fleece.

Go panther-pawed where all the mined truths sleep
to detonate the hidden seeds with stealth,
so in your wake a weltering of wealth
springs up unseen, ignored and left behind.

—Ray Bradbury, “Go Panther-pawed where all the mined truths sleep”

~~~

Get out ahead, Ray said. He whispered
in my ear from the second tier of theatre seats
where season ticket holders gather to escape.
Your former audience stopped listening years ago,
so why are you still heeding bitter voices
in your head? Imagination does not keep.
It’s manna, fresh dispensed among the tribes
you’re meant to leave, so you can fathom
where the motherlodes of Sheba’s gold run deep.Go panther-pawed where all the mined truths sleep.

Debunkers have their charm. They seem
like hammer-headed moths of vast intelligence.
They flit from mindset to vain hope of possibility,
only to wilt—another failed experiment,
I knew it! Knew what? You would be wise
to ask, but only to and of yourself.
You knew that you would find exactly
what you sought, and hope some future scientist
will prove it? Leave them to their questionable healthto detonate the hidden seeds with stealth…

…and magnify each crystal-studded vein
where economy of thought originates. Think twice:
One. For this I came. Two. For this I surely have
the means. An inch worm dreams of forests,
then, grown wings, discards old measurements.
But what of all those sickly trees you felleth,
gypsy moth? What of them? She will not rue
cocoon or larval path. Shame’s the slimy capital,
concocted and collective. Fly! Propel yourselfso in your wake a weltering of wealth

accumulates, surrounds, and in your seeing
shows itself both spendable and true.
The good you do and will from heights
of first imagined, then believed prosperity
must needs befriend the equally envisioned.
The fallen cannot help the felled to rise. Mind
you, it is true that misery loves company,
but why would you such membership desire?
Expansion is and ever will. That, not of its kindsprings up unseen, ignored and left behind.

~~~

The title of this glosa comes from the sixth line of Ray Bradbury’s poem. Parentheses are my addition.